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BEING THE THIRD EDITION OF 

A LECTURE 

SOME MISTAKES OF COL. INGERSOLL," ALSO AN ELOQUENT AND 
ORIGINAL LECTURE ON 

GEORGE WASHINGTON 



K 22 1899 




SAMUEL W. SPARKS, ESQ., 

MEMBER OF THE NEW JERSEY BAR, CAMDEN, N. J. 

This Lecture is endorsed by Press and P ulpit, and is recognized . j^ 
generally, as the best reply mtJ3eio|pol. Ingersoil. *" ^9 

PRICE, 15 CENTS. 

Published by A. J. Milliette Printing and Publishing Company, 

CAMDEN, N.J. h<$ {±/b \ 



•ECONO COPY. 



MAY 181m 



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™ SPARKS''— INGERSOLL 



apy 



BEING THE THIRD EDITION OF 

A LECTURE 

I \ TITLED 

Some Mistakes of Col. Ingersoll 

ALSO AN ELOQUENT LECTURE ON 

GEORGE WASHINGTON 



BY 

SAMUEL W." SPARKS, ESQ., 



MEMBER OF THE NEW JERSEY BAR 
CAMDEN, N. J. 



"jrO THE Christian, reclining in the arm-chair of dozing age, 
the sunset of life presents a scene of tranquil enjoyment — 
of obedient appetite — of well regulated affections — of maturity 
in knowledge — a state of ease, riding at anchor, after a busy and 
tempestuous life — the interval of repose between the hurry and 
end, and a calm preparation for immortality." 



Entered according to <Act of Congress, in the year i8gg, by 

Samuel IV. Sparks, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at 

Washington, D. C. 



■8/1 



*1 



^> 



3L275 



PUBLISHED BY 
A. J. MILL1ETTE PRINTING AND PUBLISHING CO. 

CAMDEN, N. J. 
1899. 



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{ APR 221899 



V 






Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Reason is treasured by Mr. Ingersoll as 
the only guiding star for humanity, in this life. It 
is also the philosophy of atheism that admits of no 
exception. It is claimed to be absolute and correct. 
But facts are inexorable, and although they may be 
shown in different colorings, they ever retain that same 
character, observable to him who has the brains and 
patience to think a posteori. I am in accord with the 
argument that Reason is the most beautiful flower 
that has ever grown atop of the mound of human dis- 
appointments, but it has, at the same time, been the 
most lecherous and treacherous foe that has ever im- 
peded the progress of mankind. 

When philosophically analyzed, it is apparent 
that one reasons according to the amount and quality 
of his brain ; according to the amount and quality of 
his learning, and all super-enjoined by environment. 
Men have reasoned differently in all ages, but the 
most pronounced epoch of the world, when human 
reason ascended the throne and took hold of the 
sceptre of government, was when France thought to 



unburden itself of a corrupt clergy. In that instance, 
Reason was the origin of the memorable Reign of 
Terror. Notwithstanding it is claimed by infidelity 
that the participants in that awful period in the history 
of France were crazy and not rational beings, it is 
nevertheless true that Voltaire, Gibbon and Hume 
laid the foundation for the condition that theu reigned. 
No one would hardly claim that those authors were 
crazy. Thomas Paine at this time produced his work 
which he called the " Age of Reason." It is self evi- 
dent that the Reign of Terror was a remarkable 
period in the history of the world when all religion 
was banished from human thought and reason substi- 
tuted, illustrating the effect of human law in the ab- 
sence of divine law. Reason wore its deepest red 
while dictating that awful drama. Its decrees were 
registered on fences, such as " There is no God but 
Reason." " Man is responsible to himself only. " 
" There is no future punishment : all there is, is now. " 
Brave men, servants, suitors and disciples of the God- 
dess proclaimed their loyalty to the throne by carrying 
pockets filled with human ears, or wearing infants' 
fingers in their hats. Female subjects proved their 
loyalty by paying large sums for the ghastly privilege 
of sitting beside the guillotine with their knitting and 
witnessing the terrible work of the rapid knife as it 



severed the heads from the bodies of thousands of 
victims. They enjoyed the odor from the red river of 
human blood that flowed at their feet. Reason exer- 
cised its power untrammelled. Men and women tied 
together were dropped into the sea, and the act 
dubbed a " Republican baptism." Boat loads of in- 
nocent babes were taken to sea and the vessel sunk to 
satisfy this monarch. All this and ten thousand more 
horrible crimes were being enacted when the " Sub- 
altern of Corsica," Napoleon, whom Ingersoll hates, 
took hold of the reins of state, and brought the infuri- 
ated beast of murder to its haunches, and held it there 
until the church could again be established with as 
much of the simplicity of the doctrines of Christ as 
humanity had ability to accept. 

Man is a helpless creature and moves only with- 
in his own environment. The finite is hemmed by 
the infinite. The character of man has been, in all 
ages, just what his environments made him. At dif- 
ferent times in his history we find him enjoying the 
advantages of civilization, while at other times ho is in 
abject slavery, a scholar, a savage, a peacemaker and 
a warrior, a millionaire and a pauper, a Christian and 
an infidel, an atheist and an idolater, but at all times 
a medley of contradictions. And this is the article 
with which we are to reason, and by reasoning solve, 



6 

if possible, the problem of the rights of man. Our 
earliest information of this wonderful part of creation 
represents him in a state of savagery. Before law 
was, he is seen in the forests, living in the butts of 
trees and in caverns, and, for the sake of self preser- 
vation or protection, he meets with his fellows and 
selects for a leader the tallest among them, because of 
his apparent superior physical powers. Whether this 
period was the low tide or the rise and fall of human- 
ity I do not know. Whether it was the beginning, the 
awakening, of human reasoning, or the end of a mag- 
nificent civilization, I am equally ignorant. Suffice it 
to say that the preceding time is buried in the sands 
of oblivion, and so far no light has been thrown into 
those dark recesses. The complete history of man 
has never been, and never will be, written by man, 
and we are as much in doubt of his ancestry as we 
are mystified at the results of his doings. It is claimed 
that beyond his age of savagery and periods of civili- 
zation we may behold him, in pre historic times, liv- 
ing in a manner kuown as Lake Dwellers. In their 
Kitchen-Middens, where are found the remains of 
many animals, there is a conspicuous absence of 
human remains, proving by the best possible evidence 
that man was not always cannibalistic ; aud it does 
seem that the nearer we are permitted to approach the 



alleged period iu which Shern, Ham and Japhet lived, 
the better was. the condition of the race. But, beyond 
and since, almost every valuable fact seems to be 
handed down to us wrapped iu a shroud of doubt and 
mystery. History must have commenced with the 
birth of tradition — that system in which the precious 
truths of humanity were entrusted to the care of the 
most unreliable of couriers, the memory — and to it 
alone must we look for an attempted authentication of 
fact, 

History, then, like many of the so-called sciences, 
is ofttimes built upon speculative theories, and hence 
always was and always will be subject to impeachment. 

When dealing with anything ancient all men 
should accord to it the right to be heard in its own 
defence, but it can never be right to try ancient things 
by modern law. What would the brain of Ingersoll 
have produced had he lived in the dark ages ? There 
may have been many men of his calibre, in those days, 
whose history has never been written, and they too 
must have been subject and under the control of their 
environments. By what principle of right can Inger- 
soll claim to possess the brain standard of justice, by 
which all men in all ages are go be judged ? It may 
be true that he has a higher one than many in the 
past, but who is to say that he has a higher one than the 



8 

future may produce ? If the Roman Catholic Church 
had been tried by its times, the infamy charged to it 
would have been moderated by the existing conditions. 
Many creeds when tried by the light of the present 
age, are found to be wanderers from the path of the 
true doctrines of Christ. Some appear to be filled 
with superstitious fallacies ; and, nursed by the ignor- 
ant and uncultivated classes, became obstacles in the 
way of progress ; but cruel enactments do not appear 
of recent date as of the past. 

As a rule, agnostics do not recognize a distinction 
between professing Christians and Christians. Man- 
kind has ever been prone to do injury to his neighbor, 
using the shield that would best hide his real inten- 
tion ; so that when Christ said, " I bring a sword," he 
must have foreseen what great wickedness mankind 
would resort to under the cover of righteousness. 

By the light of history it would appear that the 
intellect of man is a growth, and, in its progress to- 
wards civilization, has necessarily been subject to a 
fungus substance, that, on first view, appears to hide 
the original. Would it not be better if the brains of 
Ingersoll were devoted to the cause of man by the de- 
stroying of those fungi .? Men have always found more 
pleasure in sowing tares in the wheatfield of life than 
in elevating their fellows by lessening their burdens. 



MOSES. 

Mr. Ingersoll devotes a great deal of his time to 
arguments that the Bible is of doubtful origin, that 
the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, and that- 
many of the books contained in the Bible were not 
written by the authors to whom they have, for many 
centuries, been ascribed. And the ministry spend 
quite as much time in replying as does Ingersoll in 
announcing them. If there were any possibility of 
settling the dispute, the debaters might be tolerated 
and it might be looked upon with idle curiosity ; 
but as it is utterly impossible at this late day to pro- 
duce any new evidence, I cannot see the wisdom of 
discussing it. And again, what difference would it 
make if it were settled ? Does it matter who wrote 
the first five books of Moses ? What is the great 
interest that Mr. Ingersoll appears to have in the 
matter ? It does not appear that, as a lawyer, he 
represents Moses. What then is his interest? Has 
he been retained to defend the copyright of some one 
other than Moses ? If so, who is his client ? As a 
lawyer, Mr. Ingersoll should know that when one 
claims title to anything in court he cannot do so by 
depending on the iveakness of defendant's title, but by 
depending on the strength of his own. If Moses did not 
write the books ascribed to him, does that prove that 



10 

they were written by Ingersoll's client, or that they 
were not written at all ? The affirmative is that they 
were written by Moses ; the negative is that they were 
written by some one else ; and until it is proven who 
that some one else is, the title must of necessity re- 
main in Moses. After all is said and done it is a 
matter of no importance who did write them. With 
a like degree of argumentative sense it is argued that 
Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and for years many persons 
have been hobnobbing with the fad as though indeed 
they were his lineal heirs and felt their all depended 
on the establishment of the fact. If Bacon wrote 
Shakespeare then he tvas Shakespeare. 

ROMAN CATHOLICISM. 

By what criterion does he censure the Roman 
Catholic Church ? I regret with as much sympathy 
as can Mr. Ingersoll the terrible cruelty inflicted 
on our ancestors in the dark ages. I, too, would 
like to throw the blanket of philosophy over the 
smouldering ruins of that terrible monster, and blot 
from the memory of man its awful and tearful tra- 
ditions ; but it should be remembered that knowledge 
of the errors of the past should serve as good guides 
for the future. When Ingersoll pitches battle against 
the enactments of the past ; when he holds up, as an 



11 

object of contempt, one of the actors in those bloody 
dramas, he has no right to place it under the magnify- 
ing glass of the nineteenth century. Would it be 
right for the father to hold his son in maturity respon- 
sible for acts done in infancy ? When children do 
wrong, there are few men in the world who would fail 
to associate with the act the surrounding influences 
that engendered it, and form a judgment according to 
such facts. The Judge who would censure a man for 
his acts in infancy would be regarded as an idiot, and 
removed from office , and yet this same Ingersoll, 
brainy as he claims to be, places the Roman Catholic 
Church, as well as the Presbyterian Church, of anti- 
quity, under the magnifying lenses of the present, and 
then proceeds to pour forth from his fulsome vials the 
wrath that is in him. 

It should be remembered that men act accord- 
ing to the times in which they live, and the history 
of the race is filled with pictures of cruelties that to 
the present condition of men would be the most revolt- 
ing. Who can recall the many tragic events of the 
late Rebellion without wondering, — Could they really 
have taken place ? Can it be possible that within the 
last half of the present century thousands of human 
lives have been offered up as sacrifices for the security 
of government? I stood on Little Round Top, at 



12 

Gettysburg, viewing the magnificent scenery that 
Dame Nature has so abundantly provided at that 
place. There was nothing otherwise attractive, 
nothing to surprise me, all was quiet, and everything 
seemed to be imbued with the peaceful slumberings 
of the dead. The bugler, with his bugle call, was 
heard nor seen more. The roll-call was dead in the 
palsied hand of the drummer-boy. Some old and 
silenced cannon marked the spot where at some time 
there had been fighting. 

Monuments here and there dotted the surround- 
ing fields. Evidences of skilled workmanship, they, 
by their beauty, attracted the eye. On their sides 
handsomely carved words — meaningless words, born 
of the coldness of marble, and made chiefly to weather 
the gale, defy the storm and to laugh at the tooth of 
Time. At our feet, beneath a clear blue sky, lay a 
nation's heoric dead. This was all. But a guide, one 
who had participated in that dreadful battle, began to 
demonstrate, as far as words can demonstrate, some 
of the scenes that had there taken place. And with a 
heart moved by the well- told tales, the veteran, with 
tears in his eyes, again plead the cause of the sleeping 
thousands. Not until then, did I comprehend the 
enormity of so bloody a battle. The bugle again sent 
its warning notes across those fields, and they seemed 



13 

to once more reverb amid those parallel hills. The 
beat of the drum filled the atmosphere, while the com- 
mands of the officers could be heard as they rent the 
passions of war, in their orders to charge bayonets, 
and the battle was begun ! The clash of steel, the 
rattle of musketry, the booming of cannon, and the wild 
shrieks of those death-dealing contestants sounded as 
they went forth on their missions of victory living, or 
to victory dead. The lowering clouds of powder 
smoke cleared away, while the eyes of the dying heroes 
closed on the vision of Victory gracefully perched on 
the Throne of Justice. Hoary-headed Time, taking 
his eyes from a picture of Fate, slowly arose, and, 
gently closing the door, the great American Drama 
was closeted with the eternities. 

Turning from the pictured scene of what had 
been, I involuntarily asked myself : Could such things 
have happened among civilized men? If really so, 
can I realize so great a factor in the history of man ? 
Who is to answer for all that murder? Can it be 
claimed that Christianity is to be charged with it, or 
shall it be placed at the credit of uncivilized man? 
The Koman Catholic Church was the Church of its 
times — the monitor of kings and of princes, — and, 
though drunken with power, it was nevertheless sur- 
rounded and controlled by environments from which 



14 

it had no possible escape. It has, therefore, the right 
to claim that it shall, if tried at all, have the right to 
be tried by its peers, or by the times in which the 
offences occurred. It would be extremely unphilo- 
sophical to imagine that the first church could be as 
good as the last church will be. To argue so is to say 
that humanity at the start did not need the Christian 
influence, and that it was always pure and undefiled, 
while all the evidence in the world proves the con- 
trary. Humanity progresses and leaves behind it a 
refuse that should be forgotten, and it can never be 
fair to judge the ignorant past by the erudite present. 
Would it be justice to the slave-owners of 1850 to in- 
dict them under the laws of 1899 ? Could the black 
man who felt the cruel lash of slavery sue the master 
for that assault and battery now ? 

LAW. 

One of the most audacious pretensions of Mr. 
Ingersoll is his claim and assertion that the law that 
regulates the governments of civilized nations is not 
founded upon the Scriptures, and in this he uses the 
same illogical reasoning that characterizes his efforts 
generally. His whole ability seems to be bent in the 
demolition of what is authoritatively stated, and the 
substitution of a presumption founded only upon his 



15 

erratic statement of imaginary things. His ipse dixit 
comprises bis stock in trade, and whatever surprising 
statements he makes, they are never found to be born 
of logic or founded on reason, or even so much as on 
circumstantial evidence. In reply to his statement on 
this subject, I desire to relate some of the sayings of 
writers of approved authority, that have been sacredly 
cared for, arid handed down to posterity, as against 
which Mr. Ingersoll's arguments dwindle into insignifi- 
cance. The first evidence that presents itself against 
him is some of the statements made by Macaulay in 
his history of England. Mr. Macaulay has not only 
set the type of English speech, but he has founded 
his dissertations upon a rock of solid philosophy. He 
says: 

"The church has many times been compared by 
divines to the ark of which we read in the Book of 
Genesis ; but never was the resemblance more perfect 
than during the evil time when she alone rode amidst 
darkness and tempest on the deluge, beneath which 
all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay 
entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from 
which a second and more glorious civilization was to 
spring.'' — Macaulay's History, vol. I, p. 19. 

" The Church, up to three centuries ago, was 
generally favorable to science, civilization and good 



16 

government. But during the last three centuries, to 
stunt the growth of the human mind has been her 
chief object." — Idem, p. 53. 

Yattel, possibly the greatest writer on interna- 
tional law, is quoted in Kent's Commentaries as de- 
claring that the law of nations was founded on the law 
of revelation. Prior to the Eleventh Century there 
was no international law such as we understand it to- 
day. There were customs of barbarous origin that 
obtained under it. Citizens of one part of the earth, 
travelling from one nation or tribe to another, became 
the absolute property of any one in the tribe or people 
which they visited. 

They were enslaved or killed, at the option of 
their owners. Shipwrecked persons, cast adrift upon 
the sea, became the property of the people wherever 
fate might cast them, and subject to all the cruelties 
of slavery and death that the custom of the times 
justified. This was the universal fate of strangers, 
whether at peace or at war. The whole race of man- 
kind, under that custom, seemed to be at everlasting 
war, and peace seemed to dwell nowhere on the face 
of the globe. Athens and Sparta thought to make a 
law between them, but it was filled with the cruelties 
of antiquity. The navy at Athens, the finest of all 
antiquity, was but a gigantic piracy. Aristotle, the 



17 

lieir of Socrates and Plato, could not bring himself to 
understand the advantage of the exercise of humanity 
among nations. " The highest Roman law was filled 
with the rudeness of the ancients for the want of 
Christian principles of morals," says Kent. 

This state of affairs continued down to the Six- 
teenth Century. Chancellor Kent, an unimpeachable 
authority, further observes that " the Christian nations 
of Europe and their descendants were vastly superior 
in science and jurisprudence to all others." "There 
can be no doubt," says he, "that the Christian nations, 
like a federation, hung together through the gloom of 
the dark ages," and preserved the blessings of inter- 
national law. Again, he says : " To make war upon 
infidels was for many ages a conspicuous part of Euro- 
pean public law ; but this was a gross perversion of 
the doctrines of Christianity." To be a stranger was 
to be an enemy to the inhabitants of the world other 
than one's own immediate tribe. Manning, another of 
the greatest writers of the world on this subject, says, 
" the law of nations is founded on Christianity." And 
so on through all the writings of learned men do we 
find that they claim for Christianity the foundation of 
this important law. Grotius, the acknowledged father 
of the law, borrowed his materials from the canon and 
ecclesiastical laws, without the slightest endeavor to 



18 

obscure the fact. Why, then, does Ingersoll, a lawyer 
by profession, lend himself to such an outrageous per- 
version of established facts ? What honorable inter- 
ests does he exhibit ? Having the ears of a listening 
public, he corrupts the stream of knowledge. Can it 
be attributed to his ignorance ? No ; for he is a law- 
yer, and should know the greatest law of the world. 
Should his rude sarcasm be taken as argument against 
such well-established facts ? The solution of the mat- 
ter is simply this : 

The law that regulates the affairs of nations is the 
most important one that ever engaged the attention of 
mankind. Compared with it all other enactments drop 
into insignificance, and without it the enactments of 
the legislatures of tbe world would be worthless and of 
no avail. In that law there is a wisdom to which the 
brains and boasted intelligence of man could never 
attain. 

The jurists of the world have ever been too feeble 
to grapple with so momentous a question, and yet at 
the very moment when brains and reason failed to 
supply the demand for such a law, there was but one 
source in the entire system of things whence the spirit 
of it could be drawn. It did not emanate from the 
great chieftans that illuminated the world with their 
exploits. Not from the thoughtful brain of the phil- 



19 

osopber, nor from the mathematics of the scientist. 
Neither did it take root in the results of any of the 
•decisive battles of the world. But instead, the world 
bowed its head to the acknowledged wisdom of a meek 
and lowly Jewish peasant boy, and from him received 
the law that has blessed mankind. The law of nations 
is just less than the law that regulates the planets and 
directs the universe. Why, then, does not Ingersoll 
acknowledge this fact ? Can there be any other reason 
than the self-evident fact that such an acknowledgment 
would annihilate all his sophistical and unproven doc- 
trines? If history is true, then the Bible is the rock 
upon which civilization rests, and upon which all its 
laws of civilization are founded. 

The law of nations is as a huge river, whose 
waters will flow among all the nations of the earth ; 
and they who drink of it will eventually recognize its 
fountainhead as the chief law giver of this planet. It 
will have the effect eventually of causing all nations to 
speak the one tongue, to establish one ideal of justice, 
and to make all mankind a common brotherhood 
in active communion. At such a time it will not 
appear egotistical for the one man, standing at the 
fountain- head, to declare, " I am the light of the 
world." 



20 

" WHAT SHALL I DO TO BE SAVED ? " 

In bis lecture on " What shall I do to be saved ?" 
he discourses a long while on Matthew, John and 
Luke, and then, turning to the audience, he proclaims 
the startling fact that each of those writers is on his 
side. Then, in regular campaign order, he discusses 
with Mark the propriety of what Mark says. " When 
the young man approached Christ," says Ingersoll, 
" he asked, ' What shall I do to be saved ? ' Christ 
answered, ' Keep the commandments.' ' This I have 
done from my youth up,' replied the young man. 
Now," says Ingersoll, " there is a contract, and I ac- 
cept it. Christ said that it was necessary for him to 
keep the commandments — and this he had done ; he 
had met the requirements, and that was all there was 
about it. But, " says he, "the church has always been 
ready to do business on the principle of treasures in 
heaven for cash down, and so the clergy saw that 
keeping the commandments was far too easy and 
would bring no grist to their mill ; so they added that 
Christ further said to the young man, ' There is one 
thing thou lackest. ' ' What ?' asked the young man. 
'Go,' said Christ, 'and sell what thou hast and give to 
the poor, and follow me.' " " Now," remarks Mr. In- 
gersoll, "Christ never said that. He had settled the 



21 

question at first, and it is unreasonable to suppose 
that he ever made that addition." 

Xow let us see if Ingersoll reasons rightly and 
fairly in this matter, and also to see if there is any- 
thing in his reasoning that would in any manner jus- 
tify his belief that Christ never used the words attribu- 
ted to him. In the first place, then, it is important to 
know whether the young man spoke the truth when he 
declared that he had kept the commandments. Was 
not Christ simply proving to him, by his own words 
and conduct, that he was not telling the truth ? If the 
young man had kept the commandments, then he had 
no God before Jehovah ; there could have been noth- 
ing that he could reverence before God ; but, when he 
refused to dispose of his goods, his worldly posses- 
sions, what fact did he thereby illustrate ? Did it not 
prove that his manner of keeping the commandments, 
so far as that he should " have no God before Me " is 
concerned, was subject to his convenience ? Is it not 
clear that he would worship God at all times if it did 
not cost him anything ? Could he have kept the com- 
mandments, and, at the same time, his gold? Could 
he serve both God and Mammon ? The dialogue be- 
tween that young man and Jesus Christ is the founda- 
tion on which, some time in the future, will be erected 
the magnificent structure of Christian civilization, in 



22 

which the rights of man will be thoroughly and per- 
manently established. 

It should be apparent to every well-thinking 
man and woman in the partially civilized world, that 
the doctrine of Christ is, that it is wrong to garner 
riches. 

No man acquainted with the refined reasoning of 
the ages can entertain a momentary doubt of the wis- 
dom of Christ in this. No scholar, no philosopher, no- 
statesman, can question the wisdom of Him who spoke 
thus in the darkness of the times in which He lived. 
His doctrine, although unseen by any other one in the 
world, was a philosophical truth co-existent with 
eternity itself. No nation can become rich and poor 
at the same time and thrive long enough to resist the 
approach of decay that follows it as the night the day. 
Athens, Eome, Thebes and Carthage are examples of 
this formidable truth, and, though entombed in the 
centuries as silenced wonders, yet they proclaim the 
truth in that awful silence that echoes in the grave. 
In all the history of the world there is no record of 
any nation that rose and fell, — that has crumbled into 
the dust of oblivion — that did not do so from the bane- 
ful and cruel influence of the woeful contrast of wealth 
with poverty. The doctrine of Christ condemns both 
wealth and poverty, and seeks to establish an equality 



23 

in the rights of man, without which the history of 
the world declares no nation can long live. Wiry, 
then, can any one surmise that Christ did not meau to 
say just what is ascribed to him ? The truth of the 
matter is, that he did say what Mark attributes to him, 
regardless of whom it might wound. 

It is, however, Ingersoll-like, to argue otherwise, 
because the infidel doctrine is really intended as a 
panacea for evil doers. I have listened to several 
lectures of Mr. Ingersoll, and at the same time I have 
noted results so far as I have been able, and, with 
some exceptions, I have noticed that the men further 
from the virtues of Christianity and men of miserly 
habits have been his greatest applauders. To them 
it was gospel indeed, for it seemed to take from them 
the possibility of punishment, that they in their 
hearts knew they merited. Ingersoll ridicules the 
idea that it is easier for a camel to go through the 
eye of a needle than for such rich men to go to 
heaven, and of course they are pleased with that 
kind of philosophy. Now let us look at that for a 
moment and see just what it is made of. Can it ever 
be right for a man to be worth a million dollars and 
never know the needs of charity ? Can it ever be 
right or justifiable for one to own so much of this 
world's goods within sound of the plaintive cry of 



24 

starving children, and in view of suffering humanity ; 
in view of thousands who are daily giving up their 
claims on life simply because they cannot gather suffi- 
cient wealth to supply it with its natural demands ? 
I claim that if he retains it, knowing these things, he 
is a detriment to the world, and the cause of the 
greatest wrong to society. Suppose I should say that 
it would be easier for a camel to swim from America 
to Liverpool than for that man to enter within the 
associations of honorable men. Would that be an 
exaggeration — false philosophy and nonsense ? When 
was the time, during the period of civilization, that 
Shylock was not looked upon as a miserable creature, 
unfit to associate with men ? If Heaven exists, it 
must be governed by the law of order; and the 
admission of disorder there is impossible. One can 
alloy gold or silver and pass it for money ; but you 
may not alloy Truth, as it would then cease. Christ 
spoke the philosophy of truth and reason when he 
said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye 
of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven." And no nation could be governed by 
better law than will eventually be built upon that 
very philosophy. The universal law of nature is 
order, and Christ must have known it. Nature abhors 
the association of order with disorder, and has decreed 



25 

ihe indomitable, inexorable and irrevocable penalty of 
death for its violation. 



Ingersoll condemns the idea of miracles and 
laughs to scorn any minister of the gospel who would 
deign to believe them. In this he occupies a unique 
position, and one a majority of the world seems to 
reconcile with reason. There is one might}' truth, 
however, that accompanies the story of the miracles 
which I have never heard mentioned, by the would be 
debaters on this subject, and that is that no writer, 
from the time of Christ to the present moment, 
whether he wrote in praise of Him or whether to 
destroy His doctrine, no one, adversar}' or follower, 
ever denied that the miracles were lorouyht exactly as the 
Bible tells us. The only position taken b}> the adver- 
saries has been to explain how they were done, but 
never to deny the fact of their being done. The novel 
position of denying facts that are recorded in history, 
remains to Ingersoll alone. He has no evidence and 
wants none. He insists that his word, unsupported, 
shall be taken in contradiction to all history. Again, 
why does he deny the possibility of miracles ? 

Is it that within his own environments they do 
not occur, and are not within the limited vision of his 



26 

reason ? If so, he might be excused for his opinion, 
but such is not the case, for all things are miracles — 
the apparent rising and setting of the sun, the won- 
derful and accurate movements of the sun, earth, 
moon, stars and planets ; the winds going where they 
list, the continuous and universal motion of matter, 
compounded in a ball, and its ever accurate movement 
as it hangs unsupported, in space, are all miracles 
within the observation of the limited intellect of even 
the savage, yet not within the mind power of Inger- 
soll. All the world, and everything in it, is miracle, 
all in motion, and if what Cope says be true, " That 
matter is controlled by mind, and that mind is always 
personal," the greatest miracle is developed in the 
One Great Mind that controls all. 

REMISSION OF SIN. 

In his lamentations Ingersoll seldom refrains 
from condemning that principle of forgiveness where- 
in the thief on the cross was promised a blessing. He 
scoffs at the idea that a criminal — a murderer, may be 
forgiven in the last moment. In this his reason is 
entirely consistent with his environment and but 
echoes the judgment of his predecessors. There is no 
forgiveness in Ingersoll. The sunshine of Christian 
charity has never penetrated into the dark and dismal 



27 

recesses of his obscure soul. Nor has his brain been 
sufficiently alert to gather the increasing sentiment 
that crime is a disease, and the criminal a subject for 
the hospital rather than the confines of the dungeon. 
Men of sobriety, good judgment and true science are 
today developing the fact that criminology is properly 
a subject for the physician rather than for the hang- 
man ! And while this is really the latest achievement 
of science, the same is found in the doctrines of 
Christ, who said forgive not only "seven times ; but, 
until seventy times seven." If he had not been in- 
spired, how comes it that at that early time he could 
have pronounced a philosophy that it has taken nine- 
teen hundred years for science to develop, and which 
Ingersoll has not even yet commenced to understand ? 

FOWLS, ETC. 

In his discourse about the Holy Bible, Mr. Inger- 
soll abhors the fact that the account of creation shows 
that the " fowls of the air were made out of the water ;" 
and secondly, that the " fowls of the air were made out 
of the earth." "These stories," says he, "are older 
than Pentateuch. Among the Persians, God created 
the world in six days, a man called Adama, a woman 
called Evah. The Etruscan, Babylonian, Phoenician, 
Chaldean and Egyptian stories are much the same.'* 



All this, however, is what is known among lawyers as 
simply cumulative evidence in behalf of the Bible ac- 
count. If all these people had the same doctrine, they 
must also have had the same origin, and any court 
within the domains of jurisprudence would hold that 
the proofs submitted by Ingersoll establish the Bible's 
case beyond doubt. 

" The Persians, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese and 
Hindoos have their Garden of Eden and the Tree of 
Life ; the Persians, the Babylonians, the Nubians, the 
people of Southern India, all have the story of the fall 
of man and the subtle serpent. The Chinese say that 
sin came into the world by the disobedience of woman, 
and even the Tahitans tell us that man was created 
from the earth, and the first woman from one of his 
bones." This is also cumulative evidence that the 
Bible account is true. If all these stories are older 
than Pentateuch, as Ingersoll claims, is it not strange 
that the similarity, as well as the antiquity of them, is 
really as good evidence as could be produced by which 
to establish the authenticity of Scripture ? Is it not 
clear that this evidence proves quite the contrary to 
what Mr. Ingersoll intends ? If, on the other hand, 
he claims they are counterfeit, which he has done in 
my hearing, then has he not proven the case still 
stronger against his own inclinations ? For what is a 



counterfeit if it is not the best proof of the true — the 
original? Does one's photograph prove he never 
existed ? 

Mr. Ingersoll complains bitterly because some 
lines or phrases are where others should be ; in other 
words, that some phrases have changed places, and 
should therefore be wholly discredited. It does not 
occur to him that the Bible has been handled many 
hundreds of times, during many centuries, by printers, 
typesetters and scribes, of whose infallibility and 
honesty he does not appear to have a suspicion. He 
complains that the Bible gives two accounts of how the 
birds were created — of the earth and of the sea. Of 
course, it makes a great difference to him which is 
right, for he would not tolerate a mistake for a sirjgle 
minute. He also considers the mistake that of the 
author, and not of any other person or persons. 

I sometimes wonder if Mr. Ingersoll has ever been 
misrepresented in print — whether he has ever known 
a printer to make a mistake. The contradiction of 
which he complains is exactly the same that exists in 
Mr. Ingersoll's own gospel — Evolution. Mr. Darwin 
insisted that life had its origin in protoplasm, found in 
the sea ; and M. Treamaux, with equal accuracy, that 
" life originated in the dust of the earth." 

I have no disposition to bring into ridicule the 



30 

Tirtues of science, or even such theories as develop 
into science. I entertain the highest respect for the 
learned gentlemen in whose scientific hands rests the 
lever that is intended to move the world. But what 
I do object to is just what true scientists object to, 
i. e., the burdening of true science with such facts and 
fancies as arise in the minds of truth-perverting men, 
whose designs are to the detriment of men. The 
science of geology holds its own admirably for about 
a mile beneath the earth's crusts, and has disclosed 
many interesting results ; but when the infertile and 
jejune brain, that makes itself more prominent by its 
ignorance than by its learning, attempts to go into 
the business of world-building with a desire to outdo 
Moses, I am forced to interpose an objection. There 
is a great deal of meaning in what Paul said, when 
he cautioned his followers to "beware of sciences 
falsely so called." If Mr. iDgersoll is determined to 
measure our cloth, it is but reasonable that we should^ 
know that his measure is a correct one, and if, by 
examination, we find that it is not, we have a perfect 
right to reject it. 

He claims to know that the story of the flood is 
three thousand years older than the Book of Genesis. 
To what great authority does he ascribe the source of 
his knowledge ? A part of his religion is geology, 



31 

and from this science he borrows the learning he so 
confidently expresses. This is the yard-stick by 
which he measures and presumes to set aside the 
Scriptures, and thus perfect civilization. If it is 
right for him to try the Scriptures by this science, it 
is just as well and proper that the opposition should 
investigate those so-called sciences, and see what rela- 
tion they bear to reason and sense. In the first place, 
then, his geology is obtained from the lowest depths 
of the abyss of heathen superstition, and, after being 
dressed in modern type, was introduced into the 
civilized world by one William Smith, an Englishman, 
in the year 1815. It partakes of Chinese and Hindoo 
geology. The Hindoo geology teaches that the 
Brahm occupied a thousand yugs, or 1,300,000,000 
solar years, to hatch the first egg. Among other 
worlds hatched was ours, consisting of seven islands, 
of which we occupy the central one. This island is 
surrounded by a sea of salt water. The second is 
surrounded by a sea of sugar-cane juices. The third 
is surrounded by a sea of rum, the fourth by a sea of 
clarified butter, and so on, through curds and sour 
milk, until eventually we strike a sea of sweet water. 
The highest mountain is several miles high, and is 
located in the middle of the earth. Its shape is that 
of an inverted pyramid ; it bears rose apples and 



32 

mangoes, the size of elephants. The juice of this fruit 
is what makes our rivers. 

The Chinese are more liberal in their views, and 
less wasteful of years. Among them old Pwauku is 
said to have created the earth in 18,000 years, and 
then to have laid down and died. His whiskers 
turned to stars, his veins and arteries into rivers. 
This creation is placed upon the back of an elephant, 
and the elephant is placed upon the back of a turtle, 
while the poor turtle stood erect upon nothing. 

Modern geology teaches that the earth is made 
of strata, one upon the other, and all these strata rest 
upon a molten sea, and the sea rests upon nothing. 
The creed accompanying that gospel is evolution — a 
science, if true, that is made up of a classified knowl- 
edge of principles that are supposed to be the results 
of all knowledge. 

Geology is built upon theory, while theory is 
built upon assumption, or upon nothing. Bat I 
should be very careful in what manner I permit my- 
self to discuss this sacred subject, because many of the 
brainiest men of the age teach it as an evidence of how 
much their heads will hold. No one ever sees an 
evolutionist who does not appear as though he was, or 
is, all-wise, knowing more about the subject in one 
minute than Moses knew in all his career. But, un- 



33 

fortunately, among all these would-be competitors with 
Moses, a feature, stranger than the fiction itself, is the 
ever- predominant fact that, from the first of their class 
of great men down to the present time, there are no 
two of them who agree upon the subject. In discuss- 
ing it with Professor Cope, of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, I asked him if he could mention any of his 
predecessors in this science who agreed, and the Pro- 
fessor replied that Darwin was uncontradicted. But 
the Professor had overlooked the doctrine of M. Tre- 
maux, who took especial pains to contradict Mr. 
Darwin in the most essential particulars. The Pro- 
fessor is authority upon this subject ; in fact, he is 
recognized as the modern Darwin, and quite his equal. 
Another surprising fact is, that most of the followers 
of Darwin — those who believe in evolution — do not 
know what evolution really is, and few of them, indeed, 
but believe at least twice as much as Darwin ever 
dared to assert. 

Evolution is defined by scientists to be "a change 
from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a defi- 
nite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differ- 
entiations and integrations," which being interpreted 
by a mathematician, in the common tongue, means, 
" Evolution is a change from a nohowish, untalkabout- 
able, all-alikeness, to a somehowish and in general 



34 

talkaboutable not all-alikeness by a continuous some- 
thing elsificatious and stick togetherations," while 
Moses defines it to be as follows : 

" Let the earth bring forth the living creature 
after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of 
the earth after his kind : and it was so." (Genesis, 
1 : 24). And I might add, "And it is so." 

There is no account of creation more ancient than 
that by Moses. And no science, philosophy or theory 
originating in the cultivated intellect of man has so far 
been able to upset the truth of this Mosaic. The doc- 
trine of evolution, as pronounced by modernity, would 
suggest the idea that the Mosaic account was untrue, 
and claims the praise of discovering the origin of man- 
kind. 

The above quotation has to deal with animals other 
than mankind, while evolution seeks to prove that the 
animal kingdom was the channel through which man 
ascended to his present intellectual sphere. Evolution 
pretends to contradict the Mosaic account of creation 
in some things, but not more than evolutionists con- 
tradict one another. 

So learned have been the writers on this subject 
that productions from their pens seem to carry con- 
viction, and he who reads, ex parte, is almost sure to 
become an evolutionist. Much is considered knowl- 



35 

edge, which, in fact, is nothing but opinion or suppo- 
sition. The predicate is ofttimes elegantly written, 
while the subject itself is entirely ignored. The text 
is forgotten in the embellishing of the context. 

On a correct understanding of principles or ele- 
ments only, can pure knowledge rest. And yet the 
atmosphere is chilled with pseudo learning, founded 
on myth and guess, which disappears under the rays 
of the sunlight of truth. 

Evolution is taught in the school, and members 
of the present younger generation believe that they 
originated from the monkey; and, hence, that their 
parents are more brute than they. What an enno- 
bling thought ! I know many persons who believe in 
evolution, but have met only one of them who knew 
what evolution really is. I now refer to Professor 
Cope. 

When I suggested to him that I believed that 
evolution, when properly defined, was " the origin of 
life, and its gradations up to a degree of perfection," 
he affirmed it. I then asked him if he knew the 
origin of life. He said that he did not. I asked 
him if he knew the perfection of life. He said that 
he did not. 

If, then, the theme is properly defined, and by a 
short analysis, ignorance is confessed as to the begin- 



36 

ning and the end of the definition, what is then left ? 
Simply this : The " gradations " of life, or life under 
the law of variation. 

What a slim foundation, indeed, for so much talk, 
and that, too, " scientific" 

" Beware of science falsely so called," said Paul, 
and I might add that this science is of the kind of 
which Paul spoke. What is there in this world that 
is not subject to the laws of variation ? 

If everything is subject to this law, why special- 
ize man, and, by such law, infer that he came from 
the ape? The law itself is proof against this infer- 
ence. But this is an elementary fact or principle with 
which evolutionists do not, and possibly cannot, deaL 
With conclusions only is what they deal. 

That living creatures have only yielded their 
kind, and that man was no exception, is as true today 
as when Moses wrote, subject only to the inexorable 
law of variation, which the modern philosopher has 
apparently but recently discovered. Such a thing as 
evolution, as properly defined, could not exist. 

The strangest feature of the doctrine is that so 
much is believed on so little foundation, and on con- 
clusions contrary to the facts deduced. Evolutionists 
tell you that life originated in a moneron (a speck of 
protoplasm), and their object is to trace life from its 



37 

present condition back to said moneron. How 
strange that, when they get back to the time when 
they should find the smallest of all small things, the 
mastodon, elephant and the woolly rhinoceros occu- 
py the spot! The more antagonistic the facts, the 
stronger their belief in their theory. No one ever 
saw a moneron, and yet all writers differ on the num- 
ber of them. Differences of opinion by authorities 
on this subject is a very common thing, indeed ; for 
no writer from Anaxamander to the present time 
stands uncontradicted. 

But, as is usual, the most unreasonable must ob- 
tain with the theorist, and the more the proof one 
-way the more they believe the other. 

On one occasion, Professor Cope lectured to a 
large and intelligent audience, composed of followers 
of the faith, on the subject of " Man's Relation to the 
Animal." The first thing he said was that there were 
2,000,000 species, and then he selected just two indi- 
viduals, the Gibbon monkey and the ancient lemur, 
and proceeded with his discourse. What the rest of 
the 2,000,000 species resembled was nobody's busi- 
ness. It was enough if two things could be found on 
which to rest the imagined science of evolution. 

"The Gibbon monkey," said he, "has a hind 
foot and a lower jaw like a man." It did not matter 



38 

what the rest of that individual was like ; this was 
enough for the faithful. When he approached the 
lemur he claimed that it was necessary to obtain an 
ancient specimen, as it was a better evidence than the 
modern specimen. 

How so ? Should not the most recent specimen 
be the best evidence, or did the animal degenerate 
into man ? 

No theory or science in the attempt at revelation 
of the origin of animals and man bears the relation to 
good sense that the plain and simple statement of 
Moses does. Nothing has ever successfully contra- 
dicted his account, except " science falsely so-called." 

Similarity does not prove the case. Kesem- 
blance indicates that kind has yielded its kind, as 
stated by Moses. 

But the fact that man and the monkey were made 
with the same quantity of water and other things does 
not prove that one evolved from the other, so much 
as it does prove that both originated from the com- 
mon mother, the Earth, which contains the same in- 
gredients. 

Spencer says that the earth will , continue to get 
hotter and hotter, and will then fly into the sun and 
be finally destroyed by the heat of that body. Pro- 
fessor Winchell, of Michigan, proclaims to the world 



39 

that such is not the case at all, but that, on the con- 
trary, it will freeze up. Winchell goes so far as to 
tell us about the last two men, standing alone in the 
entire world, holding consultation over the matter as 
they stand there viewing the tomb of nature. What 
thoughts will fill their minds as they behold the great 
event ! And then one of them dies, and the other 
fellow stands there all alone, the only man in the en- 
tire world. Of course Ingersoll, like his followers, 
believes, with absolute confidence, both the theories. 
He believes in anything opposed to the Mosaic ac- 
count of creation, and the more doubtful it is the 
more he believes it. The vast chasm that existed 
between Spencer and Winchell was not so great as to 
equal the stretch of blind faith of Ingersoll in any- 
thing labeled "science." Subsequently, however, 
these two opinions were adjusted by Professor Cope, 
in an admirable lecture delivered by him, wherein he 
claimed that inorganic law was one of frigidity — 
death. A law that turned gases and fluids into 
solids. Under such teaching, it is easily observed 
that Winchell' s mind was imbued with this doctrine. 
While, on the other hand, Cope also demonstrated 
the organic law, which, he said, was the "made law." 
Under this he claimed that solids were turned to 
gases and fluids, and in this may be seen an excuse 



40 

for Spencer's idea of the earth being destroyed by 
heat. He had simply observed the organic law. It 
was left for Cope to demonstrate both, and by so 
doing dissipate the great discrepancies between the 
two scientific minds. But how infidelity will recon- 
cile their differentiations on this subject is not clear. 
For it cannot be denied that inorganic law is the law 
of death, and the organic is the law of life. The 
inorganic must have been the first. Death is, there- 
fore, natural. The second or organic, the last, and is 
the creator of life. It is the unnatural law, and Cope 
called it the "made law." Made by what or by 
whom? Certainly frigidity could not produce heat. 
I think it was Humboldt and Sir Humphrey Davy 
who tried to get to the North Pole, from whence they 
intended to look through a hole and see that molten 
sea in the middle of the earth. But eventually they 
decided to save the great expense of travel by believ- 
ing the fact anyway. The world will never know, 
however, how much it has lost by their failure ; for 
had they seen that sea in the middle of the earth 
Spencer would have been spared the trouble of de- 
claring there was no molten sea there at all, but that 
the earth is filled with gas. It don't really matter, as 
the followers of these men swallow the whole business 
without so much as a grin of dissatisfaction. 



41 

"O, ye of little faith," was never meant for our 
own dear Eobert. 

And so on, almost without end, is the grounded 
philosophy of Ingersollism dependent upon faith of 
superstitious and heathen origin. And yet he con- 
demns faith as worthy of benign punishment, and 
accredits to it all the cruelties of the world. 

The most ignorant and superstitious Christian in 
the world is undoubtedly endowed with a large por- 
tion of faith, faith in the doctrines that have brought 
from degraded humanity a civilization such as we are 
enjoying today. Suppose it blind ignorance upon 
which his faith is founded, how will that compare 
with the amount of faith a man must have to believe 
that all the life of the world that incorporates and 
surrounds us originated from a moneron, a proto- 
plasm, a microscopic speck of albumen. And yet 
Ingersoll has faith enough for that, and at the very 
moment, too, when he condemns the other fellow. 
If your minds are not clear as to who has the most 
faith, just try to believe that all the life of the world 
came from such a speck, and see if you do not call 
upon more imagination than any man in the universe 
should have. No civilized man can ask for so much 
belief on such little knowledge in any other avocation 
of life. 



42 

I shall not attempt to cite all the contradictions 
that come to the surface when stirring up this Inger- 
soll bugaboo, but only a few, as illustrations. Among 
these great men are M. linger, a world builder in 
regular business, and he says " that by the cooling of 
some basalt, he has accurately determined that it 
took nine million years for the earth to cool suffi- 
ciently to admit of vegetation." But Mr. Hilbert, 
with equal accuracy, says that is a mistake ; for, says 
he, it only took five million years. Another scientist 
settles the dispute by declaring that the whole busi- 
ness is wrong, for it took the earth three hundred and 
fifty million years to cool." Of course they are all 
right about it. 

Still one feels like asking Mr. Ingersoll : "Where 
wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? 
Declare, if thou hast understanding." "Who hath 
laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest ? or who 
hath stretched the line upon it?" " Whereupon are 
the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the 
corner-stone thereof?" I am satisfied that Mr. Inger- 
soll cannot answer these questions, nor can any scien- 
tist who ever lived. They are as pregnant with mean- 
ing today as they were the moment they were first 
asked. But there id one question that we also find in 
Job which it is the especial right and privilege of the 



43 

wise mortals to answer, and it is : " Who is this that 
darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" 
Infidelity never made a pretense to build. It has 
always destroyed. It has always occupied the posi- 
tion of the fool who " could ask questions that wise 
men could not answer." Its whole province in life 
appears to be to " darken counsel with words without 
knowledge." 



A short time since many persons were uneasy 
about the rumor that a comet would strike the earth, 
and it was corroborated by the man on the astro- 
nomical ladder. It was such a well-settled fact that 
persons were cogitating as to what would be the result 
of so great a catastrophy ; but when the jejune brain 
of the wise man was awakened to the fact that the 
comet had disappeared, they immediately proceeded 
to explain the phenomenon with as much sangfroid as 
though they indeed knew something about it. They 
were, of course, on the right side to avoid dispute ; 
but, in fact and in truth, the Oriental shepherd boys, 
with brains half asleep, could have reasoned quite as 
well, and that, too, without awaiting results to guess 
from. Such conditions and results are but the weak- 
nesses of humanity, inwoven in our nature by that 



44 

creeping and destroying disease — atheism — originating 
mainly in diseased intellects. 

AGNOSTICISM. 

Agnosticism is the cowardly side of atheism. An 
agnostic is a creature who finds pleasure in denying 
his right to think or believe, and at the supreme mo- 
ment when action is demanded, rigidly proclaims him- 
self deaf, dumb and blind, without will to see or power 
to understand. He is always found on neutral ground. 
Elevating himself on monumental heights, this crea- 
ture views the bloody conflicts of the world, devoid 
of all interest in the results, but when danger is re- 
moved, and the storms of adversity have gone, it may 
be seen beside the graves of the heroic dead, and with 
fingers touching, there emanates from its little soul 
the squeaky words, " Verily, verily, am I thankful I 
did not participate in the fray." He is one whose 
whole life is spent in cashiering anything good or 
bad that comes before him with the " I don't know." 
In political government he is a parasite. In religious 
matters he is a nuisance. And, on the whole, he is 
only tolerated because of the charity of the Christian 
religion, a principle that he never fails to condemn. 

It is a story told of some of the people in one of 
our Northern States, that, until lately, the belief was 



45 

current that geologists could tell how many years the 
snows had laid on the tops of the highest mountains. 
It was said that on one mountain the snow had laid 
for a period of three years, and this remarkable exhi- 
bition of geological knowledge was demonstrated by 
the plausible fact that between each layer of snow 
there was a layer of leaves, that had fallen from the 
trees, which fact, if proven, would satisfy most inquir- 
ing minds. 

But, unfortunately, some one asked, " Where did 
the leaves come from, if the snow laid there all sum- 
mer ? And thus the theory was exploded, and I imag- 
ine no one believes it to-day. 

HUMANITY. 

Mr. Ingersoll proclaims to the world that his re- 
ligion is "Humanity." This is the only god that the 
redoubtable Robert acknowledges. He is not with- 
out the criticism he takes from Voltaire and uses as 
his own, " That an honest God is the noblest work of 
man." How he can use that quotation advisedly I 
do not understand, for surely he does not indicate the 
knowledge of any God whom he considers honest, 
save, of course, his own created sphinx, "Humanity.'* 
And to question the honesty of humanity would to 
him appear as a sacrilegious and unjustifiable slander. 



46 

Madam De Stael, however, was bold enough to say- 
that " the more she associated with men the more re- 
spect she entertained for dogs." There are many 
people in the world who are quite as well acquainted 
with humanity as Mr. Ingersoll, and who know the 
virtues of his proclaimed religion. Many realize that 
the natural condition of humanity closely allies it with 
the brute creation, minus the virtue of the brute 
instinct. Humanity's chief law has always been the 
success of the strongest. We realize, in our journey 
through life, that one of the ruling passions of the 
strong is to care for themselves at the expense of the 
weak. There is scarcely a man, woman or child to 
whom this unpleasant fact is not apparent every day 
of their lives. The lordly or the favorites of fortune 
have always ruled with an iron hand, regardless of the 
unspeakable sufferings of the multitudes. Only a few 
years ago, in this country, under the Stars and Stripes 
that had been wrested from the cold-blooded grasp of 
monarchy, slavery existed, and was actually protected 
by law. The crack of the slave-owner's whip and the 
baying of the bloodhound was quite as familiar to the 
aristocratic and elevated people of the South as was 
the humming of machinery to the ears of the people 
of the North. It was right to own your fellow man, 
with power to chain him to the whipping post and lash 



47 

hini until his African blood should mark the spot 
where he stood ; and this was in peaceful unison with 
humanity. 

The pure, sober and wise doctrines of Jesus 
Christ, that, if understood and practiced, would lead 
mankind up to the mount of virtue, love, freedom and 
equality, have been dragged in the mud and mire of 
iniquity for hundreds of years by the savage nature of 
humanity that, emerging from savage darkness, has 
lived through all the centuries the self-same uncon- 
trollable character of harshness and selfishness, grow- 
ing rich and corpulent on the failures and misfortunes 
of its kind, while serving the Devil in the livery of 
Heaven. It was said that David said, " I said in my 
haste, All men are liars." I am prone to believe that 
in his moments of leisure he might have said the same 
thing. It is not "man's inhumanity to man that 
makes countless thousands mourn," but rather man's 
humanity to man that makes countless millions mourn. 
If Ingersoll is right, and humanity is good, why was 
not civilization introduced into the world first, and 
humanity second ? Civilization is the purification of 
mankind, but if humanity is good it does not need 
civilizing. The very fact that civilization is a growth 
is proof positive that humanity is not, and never was, 
up to the highest standard. With all the civilization 



48 

we at this day enjoy, it is still necessary to weed from 
humanity the cruelties that even now dominate the 
race. Laws must yet be made, with terrible penalties 
attached, in order to keep man somewhere within the 
pale of civilization, and it is safe to observe that the 
sun never yet shone on the hour when humanity would 
not subjugate beneath its tyrannical, cruel nature, any 
or all things that tended to elevate its kind. If it 
were really possible, it would be very difficult for the 
best mathematicians to foretell the number of years 
of the future that will be required to entirely civilize 
man. 

Humanity is barbarous, wicked and cruel today, 
yesterday and forever in the past ; and yet this is the 
only God to whom the proud Ingersoll doth bow. 

Among all the gods of heathen origin — the sea 
gods, the earth gods, the peace gods and the war 
gods, the famine gods and the feast gods, the sober 
gods and the drunken gods, the gods of pestilence, 
the gods of tempests, the gods of day, and the cruel, 
wicked gods of darkest night— there can be found 
no god so abject, vile and mean as Ingersoll 's god, 
Humanity ! 

HISTORY. 

History really commences in Egypt. The back 
door of that ancient government opens on a dark and 



49 

dismal void. From it there seems to come nothing, 
save one thing — a long string of consonants, no 
vowels, and no spaces to separate the words — but it is 
as a bridge that touches the life that is, and the life 
that was We look at it and wonder what it is. 
Eventually, however, we discover on it and around it 
is this legend : " This is God's word." When 
perused, mankind saw that it contained law — law that 
regulated their being. Rabbis at that time were 
counsellors, and interpreted the law for the benefit 
and uses of the masses. 

If it was divine, if it was prophecy, and of in- 
spiration, it was now as a precious child fallen into 
the den of hungry and angry beasts. It was now 
upon the charge of humanity, entrusted to the care of 
man, whom it was to civilize. The beast tha*: was to 
be tamed had its trainer entirely within its power, a 
subject of its clemency. But time rolled on, and this 
manuscript was read and re-read, written and re- 
written, and finally passed down the centuries for our 
perusal and approval. 

And while millions are rejoicing over it, while 
millions are civilized by it, and the earth is scented 
and perfumed with the delightful odors of the flowers 
of virtue and charity, that grow so profusely from its 
teachings, behold the bold and embittered Ingersoli 



50 

lashing it with his whip of Atheism. He knows no 
ameliorating circumstances that encrust its origin, its 
care, or its destiny. But in the best language that he 
can borrow from his antecedents, from the time of 
Pharaoh down to the present, he strives to lash into 
fury the human passions of the age by an exhibition 
of the passions of humanity of the past. 

Christianity vs. Humanity is a case that has been 
on the calendar for trial ever since the birth of Christ, 
It has been the problem that has engaged the minds 
of all generations since. Oceans of blood have been 
shed in the controversies. 

Nations have arisen and fallen as a consequence. 
In fact, the struggle of Christianity against the mid 
and bestial nature of man may be likened unto an at- 
tempt of one trainer to train all the wild and ferocious 
animals of a primeval forest ; and yet, with all this in 
view, Iugersoll does not seem to know that there is 
any difference between the contestants. He stands, 
as it were, on a monument, and witnessing the terrible 
struggle, in the very crisis of war he is heard to ask : 
" Is there any difference between them ?" The strug- 
gle of Christianity among the Fiji Islanders was of 
recent date. " So late as 1844 human lives were the 
cheapest article in their markets. It was cus- 
tomary to buy or sell a human life for a mere trifle ; 



51 

but now that the islands are dotted with about twelve 
hundred churches, the price of a human life has risen 
to the value of the life of the buyer or vender." Here, 
within the past fifty years, the learned Iugersoll could 
have witnessed one of the struggles between Hu- 
manity and Christianity. 

LANGUAGE. 

One of the difficulties of the progress of Chris- 
tianity, in the past, has been the growth of language, 
and it is on this difficulty that Mr. Iugersoll fiuds his 
strongest support. He makes no allowance for its 
growth, but argues as though language had always 
been just what it is today. There are a few people 
who mi^ht read some of the essays of Sir John 
Maundeville, that were written in 1322 ; of Sir Thomas 
Mowbray, in 1450 ; of Hugh Lattimer, in 1470 ; or of 
Sir Thomas Bove, in 1480 ; but such readers are few 
and far between. And yet they were all written in 
the best English of the times in which they lived. It 
is supposed that Shakespeare wrote the best English 
of his time ; and yet few could read Shakespeare's 
manuscript. 

When comparing the original edition with the 
latest one, a great difference is evident. For all that, 
would any person be justified in saying that Shake- 



52 

speare is a myth ; that he never existed ; and, hence, 
did not write what was attributed to him ? It is com- 
monly conceded by those acquainted with the teach- 
ing of Comparative Philology that, so far as science 
can determine, all languages are traced backward to 
the times of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and that hence 
are viewed as the original tongue the Shem-itic, Ham- 
itic and Japhet-ic languages. How strange that sci- 
ence, after so many thousands of years, should have 
arrived at the identical conclusion found in the tenth, 
chapter of Genesis ! 

FIRST LAW OF NATURE. 

The fallacious reasoning of infidelity that the 
" law of self preservation is the first law of nature ' * 
accords entirely with all the rest of its teachings, and 
illustrates its depth of thought. 

The law of self-preservation is not the first law 
of nature, and I am seriously in doubt whether it is 
a law of nature at all. The law of self preservation 
was never necessary until the law of death came into 
the world, and it was this law that made the law of 
self-preservation possible ; hence, it could not have 
been the first ; it is at least the second, and a creation 
or enactment to meet the necessities of man in his 
struggle against death. Fear is the means by which. 



53 

the law is exercised. Fear prompts its action and 
guides its course. 

ROBERT BURNS. 

We find Ingersoll in laches when, in his lecture 
on Robert Burns, he makes it convenient to omit, in 
that oration, what to the minds of most men is the 
greatest of all the productions of Scotia's bard. I 
refer to the poem entitled, " Man Was Made to Mourn. " 
There can be but one excuse, but one defense, to this 
apparently wicked and unjustifiable conduct towards 
Burns, and that is, that Jesus Christ had said, 
" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
forted ;" and Burns' soul is poured forth in classic 
lore, filled with that sentiment. If Christ had not said 
it, there is little doubt but that Ingersoll would have 
realized in that poem food for his entire oration. The 
verse alluded to is as follows : 

" Yet, let not this too much, my son, 

Disturb thy youthful breast ; 
This partial view of human kind 

Is surely not the last ! 
The poor, oppressed, honest man, 

Had never, sure, been born, 
Had there not been some recompense 

To comfort those that mourn ! ' ' 

Did ever mortal quarry a thought or sculpture it 
into beauty with defter hand, with finer grace, or with 
greater art, than that ? 



54 

Where can we look for a man in this age with 
soul so small that he could not recognize the rap- 
turous eloquence of Burns, as he stirs up the very 
blood ? Who among men could read Burns without 
pausing to contemplate its majestic beauty? Who, 
I ask, but Ingersoll ? But, my friends, how do we 
know but that he claims it as an interpolation, and 
that Burns did not write it at all ; that someone else 
wrote it ; no matter who, but presumably some 
bachelor of the Nunnery ? 

SHAKESPEARE. 

This kind of literary partisanship is not a new 
thirjg in Ingersollism ; for, in his lecture on Shakes- 
peare, he does not pay tribute of his oratory to Avon's 
sage without sacrilegiously trespassing upon his 
memory. He fain would have you believe that the 
inscription on Shakespeare's tomb, in which occurs 
the name of Jesus, was not written by the bard ; but 
that it is an interpolation. " Walking around the tomb, 
at Stratford-on-Avon," says he, "I read that inscrip- 
tion, and I said to myself Shakespeare never wrote 
that, but Sir John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, 
wrote it." With what spirit did the mighty Ingersoll 
commune to obtain such important information ? 



55 

With which of the gods he loves so well, did he hold 
converse ? 

By what power was he inspired, that he could, 
by a single swoop of his universal self glean from the 
sealed archives of the past this great secret ? For 
centuries, the curse pronounced in that inscription 
on anyone who would " move his bones," has served 
to protect it, and the bones of the immortal Shakes- 
peare still rest where they, by loviug hands, were 
hist placed. During all the ages that have come 
and gone since, no monarch, no savage, and no 
traitor has been so vile or inconsiderate as to incur 
the volume of curses that meets the eye of all specta- 
tors ; but it was left intact, as it Avas written, awaiting 
the vandalism of the Nineteenth Century to rob it of 
its protective force. On the eve of the present, 
before the day- dawn of the Twentieth Century, almost 
at the moment when the centuries are exchanging 
places, do we behold vandal so bold and so tragic. 
The immortal Shakespeare must enjoy so dramatic a 
denouement. But, happily, it is but the statement of 
Ingersoll, without reason or cause, without confirma- 
tion or truth — a slander, a robbery of the helpless 
dead, in which men of accountability will never take 
part. 



56 

ABSOLUTE LIBERTY. 

iDgersollism indoctrinates in men a belief that 
nothing short of absolute liberty is their due, and 
that by not having it they are deprived of their 
natural rights. Such a thing as absolute liberty does 
not exist anywhere in the known world. 

The stars are restrained to their circuits ; the 
earth itself has its orbit, while every other thing in 
the earth is circumscribed. Sometimes the ocean 
may be seen, as it rolls its tempestuous billows high 
in the air, gathering its white crests in sportive beauty, 
and then breaking on the shore into thousands of 
majestic splendors, making it appear an exception, 
and that it does enjoy liberty absolute ; but at another 
moment, it may be seen, mournfully and sullenly, 
breaking on the shore, subdued and controlled. 

The passions of mankind, at times sportive and 
gay, rising and falling, gathering the white crests of 
hope and charity as though there were no limita- 
tions to its joy, suddenly, ah, sometimes too sud- 
denly, they break upon the shore of despair and of 
despond. 

It seems to me that I can appreciate the 
feelings of Byron, when, standing within sound of 
the surf beat, the earth-beat, and the heart-beat, he 
said : 



57 



There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society where none intrudes, 

By the deep sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not man the less, but nature more, 

From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 

To mingle with the universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 



A LECTURE 



ON 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 



BY SAMUEL W. SPARKS, ESQ. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Many persons believe that governments are per- 
fectly natural and indestructible ; that they exist as a 
matter of natural fact and are imbued with a spirit 
of eternity. It is this method of reasoning which 
most threatens our government. The life of govern- 
ment is a creation of man and it stands upon the will 
of its creator. Man, himself, exists by the will of 
his maker, and governments are but the aggregate of 
mankind. What is necessary for the existence of one 
is likewise necessary for the existence of the other. It 
has been observed by men of great reputations, that 
life is not natural, but that on the contrary it is clearly 
unnatural. From the joyous moment of birth to the 
last sad rites of death, from the cradle to the grave, 
from the first spring of hope to the beginning of 
destiny, mankind as well as every other form of life is 



60 

constantly engaged in a struggle with death, until at 
last it sheathes its sword of contention, and falls, ex- 
hausted, into the arms of its adversary. 

From the moment the plant thrusts its head above 
the soil, its tendency is towards death, but by the rays 
of the sun and the effect of its environments, it is 
able to live awhile, and, then, succumbs to the inevit- 
able. Thus, the life of shrub and plant, of man and 
animal, of civilization and government, are subjected 
to one and the same destroyer without the slightest 
possibility of escape. 

From the chaotic state of man's originality, from 
the continual agitations of his conditions and the up- 
heavals of his animosities, from the victories that 
perched upon the banners of interminable warfare, 
from the cries and groans of myriads of wounded 
and dying, and from the flower Truth that seemed to 
grow in the very crisis of war, from the times of sav- 
age butchery to the times of polite wholesale murder, 
sprung the American Republic, a thing of beauty and 
of joy, crowning herself with the laurels of Justice. 
Having sprung from such an ancestry it is but reason- 
able to suppose that the American family will find it 
pleasing to so guard the ship of State that the history 
of the past may live only in fantasy and legend. Past 
history is written in the blood of the ages. Let us 



61 

hope that future history will be written in the sun- 
light of reason by the hand of benevolence and 
charity. 

I am in no sense a man worshipper, although it 
would be impossible to place the mind on any period 
of the human race where some one had not been 
lionized and deified for acts of tyranny as well as of 
patriotism. Even in this day, small men, locally great, 
great in the conception of greed, avarice and prejudice, 
are lionized as great public servants, but in accord 
with the unwritten tenets of our race they are glori- 
fied today only to be forgotten and lost in the oblivion 
of tomorrow. This is not the case, however, with truly 
great men. With them it would seem that the evil is 
interred with their bones, while the good lives forever 
after, illuminating each page of history in the succes 
sion of ages. Such a character was Washington. 
Possibly no one ever rose so high in the scale of human 
adoration and who accomplished so many successes 
for the advancement of mankind, at the same time 
bearing the burdens of a people. He occupied a 
unique position in history such as the world had never 
known, and although he felt that he would rather "be 
in his grave than in the Executive Chair," he was ever 
watchful, and trod the path laid out for him with the 
solid tread of the hero that he was. 



62 

WASHINGTON AND LIBERTY. 

Washington was one of the few men to achieve 
the great principles of self government ; as a soldier 
he was the leader where wisdom directed the storms of 
shot and shell, and from the furies snatched the emblem 
of liberty, for no other reward than a consciousness 
of the performance of duty, and with the love of a 
patriot, bestowed that liberty upon a deserving people. 

Solon, one of the seven wise men of Greece, when 
asked the best form of government, replied that " the 
best form of government would be where a wrong done 
the lowest individual would be an insult upon the 
whole constitution," and although he spoke thus 
wisely, no period had ever been where the consumma- 
tion of such philosophy could have taken place until 
the dawn of the day when the thirteen American 
colonies committed high treason by publishing to the 
world their Declaration of Independence. 

The k< divine right of kings '' had seldom been ques- 
tioned, but had obtained through all ages as the only 
government known to man (with some few exceptions). 
There was no precedent in history for a republic like 
ours. The first pare germ of democracy was sown in 
the fertile soil of America, and, cultivated by the 
" Oincinnatus of the West," it grew until it has reached 
its present splendor. 



63 

But even the character of Washington did not 
live through all the vicissitudes of life without being- 
scarred. Even at this day there are men, mostly 
Americans, who traduce his character, and with feeble 
intellects attempt to detract from his glory. 

When Clay took his departure in the Senate, 
the scene of his many battles, he said : "I depart as 
a wounded stag, pursued by the hunters on a long 
chase, wouoded by the spears aud wearied by their 
wounds, and which had at last escaped to drag its 
mutilated body to its lair and there lay down to die." 
The remorseful reflection might with propriety 
be applied to Washington when taking leave after his 
long official services. 

The traduction of great men has ever been com- 
mon in this country. Even to this day there are 
those who associate with Washington the name of 
Paine as the author- hero of the Revolution. And 
while I do not deny to that patriot his share in the 
establishment of the rights of man, I do condemn that 
principle wherein his worshippers seek to throw dis- 
honor upon Washington. 

It is true that Paine languished in a French 
prison and that the United States did not immediately 
intercede for his release, but not without reason. At 
this time America was just recovering from its wounds 



64 

and had broken its treaty with France. Circum- 
stances justified Washington in refusing to commit 
any act or thing by which this country would again 
be plunged into war. Nor did it evidence pure love 
of country for one of its citizens to expect such a sacri- 
fice for the saving of a single life. 

It is said that among the papers of Paine wa» 
found a slip of paper on which were written these 
words : 

Go quarry the roughest stone, 

And write the name Washington, 
And with tools that are rude, 

Inscribe the word "Ingratitude." 

TOOK UP A HERCULEAN TASK. 

Washington had not only to contend with the 
criticism of the " Jingoes" of his time, but he saw and 
felt the weakness of the conditions that he was to 
mould into military power. 

The population was sparse, poor and unequipped, 
yet in view of it all he blushingly accepted the trust, 
relying upon nothing but the intense patriotism of the 
tillers of the soil and the ever ruling dispensations of 
Providence in the arbitrament of war. On the third 
day of July, 1775, four months after the battle of 
Bunker Hill, when he went to Cambridge to take 
charge of the American forces, he saw them in their 



G5 

primitive condition. He saw them living in absurd 
tents of canvas and in rude huts roofed with bark, 
and with scarcely ammunition enough for a modern 
Fourth of July celebration. 

But knowledge of their conduct in the battle on 
Breed's Hill satisfied his mind as to the kind of mate- 
rial they were made of. There he saw Israel Putnam 
and heard the story of how that old farmer had, just 
before the battle, given orders that the troops should 
not fire on the enemy until they " should see the 
whites of their eyes and then aim for their waist 
bands." He heard the story of General Warren, who, 
leaving all other things, entered in the thickest of the 
fight as a common soldier. He knew that the cause 
of human freedom had been baptized in Warren's 
blood, and for patriotism he knew that every soldier 
was a living Warren. No suspicion of fear as to their 
loyalty ever entered his mind. He had taken his posi- 
tion on the stage of life as the chief tragedian in the 
greatest drama that the world had ever witnessed. With 
him all was action. In his hands had been placed the 
future of the human race. To his skill, judgment and 
sense was entrusted the great duty of demonstrating 
" to the world, the flesh and the devil" that the ordi- 
nances of God were not to be kept under the iron 
heel of kings, but that man should ascend to the 



66 

estate to which, by all just law, he was entitled. No 
philosopher ever underestimated his antagonist. 

Washington did not misunderstand what it meant, 
without money, to prepare and discipline an army 
that should meet in deadly strife the greatest, largest 
and best army then on earth. He knew what they 
were. He knew the heat of Caucasian blood in battle, 
he was acquainted with the knowledge and skill of 
their commanders, for with both had he marched over 
many "bloody corpses strewn," and placed upon Fort 
DuQuesne the flag of England ! 

If he was not in ignorance of his enemy, neither 
was he in ignorance of his own condition, and as one 
armed with the ordnance of Heaven, he marched his 
half-clad, half- starved forces to the scene of action and 
to ultimate victory. I cannot dwell upon the details 
of history ; that is the province of the schools, but 
upon the character of the man and his position in his- 
tory would seem to be our part of the programme. 
But who is he, now breathing, or living in memory 
only, that can portray the character of Washington ? 

Many have undertaken the task, but their pens 
were weak and effete. Oratory has many times burst 
into livid flames in the attempt. Prose writers and 
poets have exhausted their powers in the description 
and yet the work is not done. 



67 

Xo monument made of polished stone can per- 
form that duty. A silent monument of stone may 
excite the curiosity of succeeding generations, but it 
can never tell them who Washington was. His true 
character will never be known nor understood until 
that time when the seed of democracy, planted by 
himself, shall, by the course of divine law, blossom 
and bloom into the full grown flower wherein the 
rights of man are acknowledged to each and every 
individual on this sphere. To those who desire to 
complete the structure designed by the heroes of 1776 
I recommend the study of the doctrines of Washing- 
ton, for not only was he great as a soldier, but his 
abilities as a statesman transcended all others. His 
farewell address should be taught at every hearthside 
and in every school, for it is as applicable to our con- 
dition today as when it dropped from his lips. 

WASHINGTON AS A STATESMAN. 

In that address the ideal elector and the value of 
our political franchise are described with such precision 
that none but a fool or a traitor can ignore it. 

He cautioned his people against the possibilities 
that might arise from doctrinal distinctions that 
should develop into parties of North, South, East and 
West, and had he been understood the war between 
the states might have been avoided. 



68 

The lamp of his genius throws its rays down the 
corridor of time and into every recess. Had Madison 
absorbed the trend of his doctrine on sectional differ- 
ences, the infamous Kentucky resolutions would never 
have seen the light of day. Had Jefferson, one of 
the beacon lights of history, fully comprehended and 
appreciated them with accuracy as did Jackson, "Web- 
ster and Lincoln, the germ of the disease known as 
" State Sovereignty," would never have been sown in 
the fertile and fat brains of the southern youth. The 
eloquence of Hayne and Calhoun would never have 
been spent as precursors of that awful war that strained 
every timber in the ship of state. 

Every man of brains must pause when he contem- 
plates the amount of blood shed that the government 
might live. Everything that we this day enjoy, indi- 
vidually or collectively, was purchased at the price of 
human life. When he thinks of the abuse of the 
ballot — that expression of his will — placed in his hands 
as a means of protection from foreign and domestic 
foes and for the wise control of the Republic, he 
must needs shudder for the fate that awaits posterity. 
MacCaulay observes that there will come a time " when 
a traveller from New Zealand, sitting upon the broken 
arches of London bridge, will sketch the ruins of St. 
Paul's." Meaning that the attainments of civilization 



69 

are but temporary, and will crumble and fall into the 
dust of ages ; that the accomplishments of Washing- 
ton will be destroyed by the ignorance and carelessness 
of the American citizen ; that the blood of the patriots 
of 1776, of 1S12 and of 1861 will have been shed in 
vain and the ideal of patriotism dwarfed into the 
mockery of political tyranny. For my part I entertain 
greater hopes for America than that. I have faith in 
the little school, the academy, the stories told by the 
hearthstone, and in the lullaby sung, while the mother 
sways the cradle of future generations. 

I do not believe that the government will ever grow 
too strong for the good of the people, nor too weak for 
their protection so long as the spirit of Washington 
makes an impress on the face of American politics. 
I believe the government, founded on the rock of 
justice, cannot, by any foe, foreign or domestic, be 
destroyed, but that it will live as the emblem of the 
chief glory of the human race, for all time to come 
"one and inseparable." In the expression of such 
sentiments I am not alone, for history brings to our 
mind's ear the same from Monticello, the home of 
Jefferson ; from the hermitage, the home of Jackson ; 
from Ashland, the home of Clay ; and across the cen- 
tury in gentle rythm it comes from Mount Vernon, 
the home of the immortal Washington. 



70 

I fain would add a flowerette to the garland of 
rich roses with which the world has bedecked his 
memory. How becoming it is for gentlemen at this 
time to pay tribute to so grand a character, for, 
he was born of the richness of virtue at a time 
when naught but godliness and patriotism could 
vouch for the success of posterity, when the 
minds of men were in turbulent agitation and 
chaos ruled. At the banqueting table of our coun- 
try's first supper there gathered a few minds, the 
select of the world, that glittered in the firmament of 
human reason, and with almost godlike thought created 
a government that should bring blessings to the 
hearthside of its every household. Among them, and 
towering above, stood this intellectual giant, wrapped 
in a robe of Christian virtue, commissioned the father 
of a vast country. There were several others in that 
little gathering not so enrobed. They were not be- 
lievers in the faith, yet they were the unconscious 
instruments through which Washington was to act. 

Had he been any less a general, or any less 
a Christian, the destinies of America would have 
been with the class of ancient republics that have long 
ago withered and gone into decay, and we would not 
be thus enjoying the feasts of freedom, friendship and 
charity. Instead, savage warfare would have sat upon 



71 

the throne of human bondage, wielding the dictatorial 
scepter of absolute monarchy. Had he been any less 
a man, or had he been any less endowed with power, 
the " divine right of kings " would to this day have ob- 
tained. Who can estimate how much the world is to 
be congratulated that Washington — the ideal general 
— lived at the time he did ? In what other era in the 
history of man could he have been of greater service ? 

In the " times that tried the souls of men " our 
country had its birth. With no previous example of 
government after which to pattern, the world was in 
darkest ignorance as to what glittering splendors a 
republic would produce. 

The people were poor and uneducated and were 
moved more by the instinct of self-preservation than 
by consideration for the welfare of others. They 
were new settlers of the soil, and did not experience 
that principle of patriotism which can only be super- 
induced by natal love. 

They were undecided as to the manner or form 
of government which would add most to their pleas- 
ure and happiness. Hosts of men unorganized, yet 
armed for the bloodiest of battles, stood awaiting 
command. Who could anticipate the scene that was 
about to open? No philosopher, sage or prophet 
could have foretold the birth of a republic. Thebes, 



72 

Rome and other nations arose on the crests of the 
waves of time, for awhile, and then sank and were 
seen no more. Apparently, Oligarchies and Mon- 
archies alone had established their rights, as the 
most proper and correct form of government, and 
mankind as a rule accorded to them that franchise. 
But here was an epoch that was to change the customs 
of the world. The Hand of God moved in the affairs 
of men. Out of chaos, through the instrumentality 
of Washington, from the dark war-swept past, burst 
the rays of a bright and shining republic. When the 
last link that held the new country fast to the old was 
broken, the decorated crown of heathen origin that 
had dominated the ignorance of mankind for all pre- 
vious time, lay at the feet of a victorious people, a 
trophy of war — at the feet of a sovereign people — an 
evidence of their sovereignty. No man, creed or 
party, with souls burning with ambitious rage, has 
thus far even dared to bend the knee in an effort to 
raise it to the head of any pretender ! 

The infant republic, nurtured by nature, grew 
until the world saw a nation of men, strong, hearty, 
educated and patriotic. The brains that had been 
chained for centuries to the belief in " the divine 
right of kings " broke the barriers and bounded into 
the arena of liberty, champion of the rights of man. 



73 

And then, not satisfied with so many achieve- 
ments, it bounded from the earth to the skies, where, 
grasping the fire of the lightnings, it returned to 
awaken the world from its reveries, and to illuminate 
the dark recesses of reason that had so long been 
closed. For the first time in its history mankind 
had received the light of heaven and genius had blos- 
somed and bloomed into stately manhood. 

With " liberty " engraved upon the escutcheon of 
American principles, transcendent genius could not 
abide the time while the thorn of human slavery stuck 
in its side. 

With it still there the virtues of the republic 
were not achieved. The tenets of the Declaration 
of Independence were but words, and the animalism 
of man had been but partially assuaged. It was not 
right for slavery to exist where kings could not rule. 

If it was right for men to reject the tyrannical 
rulings of kings it was equally right that the slave 
should reject the claims of the white man's control 
over his person. And while the new Constitution was 
being nurtured into strength and fortitude, and the 
work of Adams and Franklin at the Court of St. James 
was beginning to bear fruit, there was born in a 
pioneer hut in Kentucky a son of the republic whose 
destiny — meteoric in nature — was to develop brain and 



74 

muscle — without school or college — save the land- 
scape and woods — that should fit him for the highest 
position in the gift of any people. When the last 
remaining thorn was giving pain to the whole body 
politic there was called from the backwoods of America 
— a railsplitter — and in his hand was placed the 
scepter of absolute freedom. It does seem that De- 
mocracy exercised its strength to exhibit to the world 
that mankind, freed from the yoke of Eoyalty, had in 
its make-up material for rulers that could be taken 
from the very lowest ranks of men, and who could fin- 
ish the work of Washington by again proclaiming 
Liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabi- 
tants thereof. 

" Then let Traitors be told, who their country have sold, 
And bartered their god for his image in gold, 
That ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves 
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves." 



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